Except
by Felicity G. Silvers
Summary: It's always been the exceptions that define their relationship. Bruce wouldn't have it any other way.


This is an alt-verse, modern setting. I guess it's sorta a college fic, except that's more background than foreground.

(Bruce/Loki is one of my favourite ships omfg so excited to have written one finally)

**Warnings** : transphobia, absolute dick behaviour, implied past abuse, and potentionally a past non-con situation (though it is very much not described)

**other notes**: hipster-Loki is prooooobably my favourite au thing _ever_

if you see something that looks a bit like a myth spun into a modern setting you aren't crazy

I hope you like it and enjoy the story~~~

* * *

They met over chemicals and brownies. So the brownies had chemicals in them. Bruce could hardly be held at fault for that; they helped him relax, and after five hours dealing with gen chem undergrads all convinced they would fail the test the next day, he needed something to help soothe the migraine he had.

Bruce usually didn't give anyone any of his pot (or resulting pot brownies).

Except.

Except this undergrad had tracked him down to his house, fuming and pissy and entirely convinced the world was going to end if he failed this test, and Bruce, at the best level of not giving a single fuck, thought _you could totally use a brownie._

So Loki ended up bombing the test. It turned out not everyone was as good at studying chemistry stoned out of their mind as Bruce. Who knew?

Loki counted it as their first date, when he didn't hold it against Bruce.

XxXxX

Things that Bruce knew about Loki when they started dating: he liked tattoos and piercings and eye shadow so heavy around his eyes that if he put it on wrong he looked like a raccoon. He liked skinny jeans and liked painting his nails black with sparkles (except the middle, which was always neon yellow—for effect Loki said) and shirts that swallowed him whole. His hair was little more than an accessory with how frequently he dyed and cut it.

When Loki talked, it was an entirely different language half the time, bands and writers Bruce had never heard of (and if Bruce had heard of them from someone else, he could safely bet Loki no longer liked them).

XxXxX

Loki told Bruce he was trans the way Loki did everything, which was throw the statement out like it was a challenge, chin up and eyes sparking fire.

(Except this wasn't in public, like every other time Loki got confrontational.)

Bruce reached out and touched Loki's arm (usually a recipe to get a hand seriously injured when Loki thought the world was against him) and said, "Okay."

"Okay," Loki said flatly.

"Okay," Bruce repeated with one of his half-smiles. "Do you want to tell me more?"

XxXxX

Things Loki knew about Bruce after they had been dating for several months: he liked to try new teas and he liked the handful of days his curls would cooperate with him. He liked loose pants and button ups with the sleeves rolled up. He did not like having his nails painted (except when he was stoned, when he would let Loki paint his toes purple and green, to Loki's endless delight. Sometimes, in the morning, Bruce would wiggle his toes against Loki and Loki would smile, cat-heavy and content). Bruce had never dyed his hair, and never intended to, though he'd inherited the family trait of starting to gray early. Loki thought that it made him look older in a sexy way, and he knew Bruce was flattered by the sentiment.

When Bruce talked, it was an entirely different language half the time, chemical equations and reactions and research that Loki could never follow (but he didn't mind, lazy and languid against Bruce after sex, watching the way Bruce waved one hand above them, one arm around Loki's waist).

XxXxX

They never told anyone they were dating, and it took six months before Tony realized Loki had moved in.

XxXxX

What they liked: Bruce liked how he would wake up—always before Loki—-and Loki would be tangled around him like an octopus, because it didn't look comfortable (looked boneless), but if Bruce tried to slide free Loki would always wake grumbling. Loki liked how Bruce didn't mind that Loki had to have the left side of the bed and the pillows had to be exactly a certain way, and how Bruce would sometimes even try to get the pillows how he liked them. Bruce liked how Loki's smirk was a promise of violence during foreplay and Loki liked how Bruce would leave bruises on his skin when they had sex, and they both liked to kiss every bruise and scratch afterwards—promises only they understood.

What they didn't like: debates turned into full-blown fights, Bruce retreating to the labs on campus and Loki to the roof of the house no matter the weather (except for when it hailed; they never fought when it hailed). Loki always tasted like nicotine when they made up, and Bruce always tasted like one particular white tea that Loki insisted was Bruce's favourite even though it wasn't.

XxXxX

Tony, who was friends with both of them, could explain all the ways he thought they shouldn't work, starting first off with Loki's need to get a reaction and Bruce's barely checked anger.

He would also point out that Bruce was older and knew what he was doing with life, while Loki very much _didn't_. Bruce just needed to write his dissertation and he'd have his Ph. D., a job already lined up for his gradation in a few months; Loki, meanwhile, was six years younger and on his fourth year of undergrad getting ready for a fifth and still very obviously had no idea what he was doing and _seemed_ to have decided that trolling the political science majors was enough of a life goal for now.

(Not that Tony thought that was a bad thing; he was all for trolling the liberal arts majors.)

But then he'd shrug, because, really, it was just a theoretical exercise—they _did_ work, and Tony got a friend to go drinking with who would actually drink and loved a good party, so what did it matter, anyway?

XxXxX

Loki liked parties, and so did Tony, which meant that sometimes Bruce would find himself at one as the designated driver.

(He put his foot down on hosting parties; he liked his house exactly the way it was. Loki, who needed a space he could call _safe_ even he'd never admit it, agreed with a great deal of sighing and pretended angst.)

Which was how he had ended up here, in a kitchen of a house he hadn't been to before, talking to a very sincere and blue-eyed guy named Steve about the role of technology in activism (if Loki showed up, Bruce was fully prepared to blame Steve for the topic) and generally enjoying himself even if he wasn't drinking.

(Bruce did not drink. Growing up with his father had put him off it, and most of Bruce's life was a long history of purposefully _not_ being his father. That Loki never flinched when Bruce reached for him or raised his voice were just a few of a thousand ways Bruce told himself he was managing it.)

"Hey," Tony said at his shoulder, "not to interrupt, but there's a dude that won't leave Loki alone. Back patio, Loki wanted a smoke."

Bruce half-turned to Tony, one brow dipping in confusion, but Tony was serious, a finger tapping against the center of his chest and mouth pulled into a frown. Bruce nearly asked why Tony wasn't doing anything, or pointed out that very few people came out unscathed when heckling Loki for any length of time, when he realized Tony was just a little wide-eyed.

"Excuse me," Bruce told Steve.

Bruce wondered if Loki was too angry for Tony to want to risk getting between him and the guy in question. Loki's temper was volcanic, and more than one friend had become not a friend when Loki was angry enough to take anyone trying to calm him down as a personal attack. Tony knew that few people could calm Loki down like Bruce could.

(Tony had asked Bruce what the trick was; Bruce had shrugged, because it relied on the fact Bruce understood Loki's anger as intimately as his own because Loki's anger was, at its core, Bruce's.)

Except.

Except, as Bruce stepped on the back patio, Loki _wasn't_ angry. Loki wasn't saying _anything_. Loki who was usually fire and spit and words like broken glass, chin up and spine straight like a challenge, not afraid to scream his anger and laugh at the wreckage left in his wake because there was a part of him that wanted to see how the world burned.

Loki was _distressed_.

His eyes were down and his shoulders hunched in, arms over his chest and sleeves pulled over his arms when they'd been rolled up to show off his new tattoo when they arrived. His hair was half in front of his face and eyes darting anywhere but at the guy in front of him. He looked _small_ the way he only looked when panicking over hail, and as Bruce got closer, he realized Loki's breath was shallow and quick, and that he was shaking.

"Hey," Bruce said shortly.

The guy glanced at him, then dismissed him. People did that—Bruce wasn't tall, like Loki, or broad. For once, it pissed Bruce off more than anything in the world.

"Hey," Bruce repeated, grabbing the guy's arm, making sure his attention was on Bruce before he said, clearly and slowly, "Leave."

"Mind your own business."

"You're upsetting him. Leave."

"Him?" the guy sneered; out of the corner of Bruce's eye, Loki flinched. "What, are you _her_ boyfriend? She tell you what she is? Or should I say 'it'?"

Bruce went still.

"What's your name?" Bruce asked.

"What the fuck does it matter to you?"

"Loki," Bruce said, voice calm, "do you know this guy?"

"Oh, you _are _her boyfriend."

"Loki," Bruce repeated.

"Svad," Loki said, voice stilted and distant, and a part of Bruce was already cataloguing if he had any plans the next morning he would need to cancel.

"Svad," Bruce said, and he smiled to show his teeth. "I'm going to repeat myself one more time. _Leave_."

"Fuck you," Svad said, shrugging Bruce's hand off his arm.

XxXxX

Bruce had spent most of his adult life not giving into his temper.

_Had_.

Considering _why_ he had just broken his six year streak, he didn't really mind, even if his glasses had been broken. At least he really only needed them for reading.

"Where's Loki?" Bruce asked.

"Sitting on the back stairs. Call me if you need anything; I'll crash over at Pepper's or something," Tony said.

"You sure?"

Tony rolled his eyes.

"Loki is going to be pissed at you for seeing him like this, and _you're_ his favourite person. I'd really rather not risk it."

XxXxX

As soon as they stepped inside the house, Loki went straight to bed, curling up still fully clothed, knees drawn to his chest and blankets piled around him.

He didn't speak.

Bruce followed more slowly, set up in the floor with a notebook and his laptop to go through lab results that he had planned to look at in the morning. He worked quietly, but he didn't try to be silent.

"Stupid," Loki whispered somewhere near sunrise, and Bruce didn't know if Loki was talking to him or to himself.

"Possibly," Bruce allowed. "Did you know him?"

"I should have _done_ something. Hit him, or left, or—"

Bruce left his things in the floor to lay next to Loki on the bed, reaching out slowly—and when Loki did not move his head away, stroked through hair currently dyed the same electric blue as most of Loki's nails.

"Weak," Loki said with a shudder, eyes closed.

"Loki," Bruce said and waited until Loki opened his eyes. "You're the strongest man I know."

Loki's face flickered—anger and hurt and shame—before he loosened a hand from around his pillow, reaching forward to rest it against Bruce's throat, thumb stroking the skin. Bruce smiled at him.

"I don't need saving," Loki told him.

"No," Bruce agreed.

"I met him at a bar." Loki went quiet, closing his eyes. "A few years ago. It was stupid, I was stupid, I wasn't thinking, I—"

"Loki," Bruce interrupted. "You don't have to tell me. And whatever happened, it wasn't your fault."

Loki didn't say anything for a few long minutes.

XxXxX

What Loki said was that he met Svad and his friend at a gay bar one night. He'd gone with some of his older brother's friends, and they made a bet—only it looked like they would lose. So Loki decided to throw it, so they wouldn't, and distracted Svad, who had a much bigger alcohol tolerance than they had anticipated. And that had worked, too.

Except.

What Loki said was that Svad didn't take well to finding out Loki was trans.

What Loki said was that he hadn't meant things to get that far.

What Loki left unsaid, in his pauses and breath hitches and how his eyes darted to Bruce's face, the anger and shame and hurt in malachite green eyes, left Bruce shaking with rage and helplessness that swept through him like a tide.

XxXxX

"I love you," Bruce said, and if there was more force in his words than normal, he didn't care. "I love you and it wasn't your fault then and it isn't your fault now and he's _wrong_, do you understand, whatever he said to you and about you, he's _wrong_."

Loki stared at him with wide eyes, then he laughed—rough at the edges, and a little hollow, but a _laugh_, like it was startled out of him—and his lips managed to turn up at the corners even if it wasn't a smile.

"Well, he's right I cheat when I gamble," Loki admitted, like a secret, as much a joke as he could manage, and while the anger in Bruce's chest didn't vanish (wouldn't vanish) it eased enough he could force a smile.

"So that's why you always win during strip poker."

Loki smirked.

Bruce kissed it off him, and eventually managed to make a case to at least get under the blankets Loki had surrounded himself with sometime after the morning sun was pouring into the room, which turned out to be pointless as the pillows weren't in the right spot and Loki wasn't on the left side of the bed so everything had to be rearranged anyway.

XxXxX

If Loki made a point of being ruggedly stubbled (his words) and spent an entire week without any nail polish, make-up, or hair dye, going so traditionally masculine that Bruce was seriously starting to wonder when Loki learned all that much about football, well, Bruce didn't say anything at all other than to compliment his cologne. (Bruce's cologne, but Bruce liked it, so he wasn't lying.)

Bruce didn't mention it either when he came home one afternoon to find the bathroom sink covered in lime green hair dye, Loki's nails painted black except for the middle fingers—purple and green stripes Bruce was a bit more used to seeing on his toes.

XxXxX

What they know: Bruce will punch a complete stranger in the face for Loki, and Loki will lie with an entirely straight face that Bruce tried to kill a man for stealing his pot to explain Bruce's black eye.

Bruce wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
